November 16 - 30, 2017
PHILIPPINE ASIAN NEWS TODAY
For the love of words
Life etc.
by Jun Cordero
My wife and I commute daily to
work and I never would run out of
complaints against our public trans-
portation system, especially when
incessant train delays affect our very
own work. When they launched the
Skytrain Millenium Line extension
from our Coquitlam area, however,
some of my beef against Translink
were somewhat evened up by the
convenience it provided, even think-
ing that it was one of the best ideas
that Translink ever came out with.
But, like anything else in this life,
when tasks become familiar routines
we just can’t avoid getting annoyed
and irritated by little things that are
thrown along our way. For instance,
taking the Skytrain every single day
I’ve become stupefied by that auto-
mated pre-recorded voice that an-
nounces the next station.
If you’re a Skytrain regular you
would be familiar with the ding-dong
announcement from that nice, pleas-
ant voice that says “the next station
is (whatever)”. Of course, it’s the next
station - why in the world do they still
have to say that. The train is moving
forward so definitely it’s the next one.
For years my wife and I have
been blessed with the opportunity to
every now and then travel to other
cities around the globe. In many of
these travels we’ve sampled a little
of the life of the locals in those cit-
ies. One of them is commuting us-
ing public transportation. Cities like
New York, London, Rome and Paris
have amazing and intimidating sub-
way and metro train systems that our
own Skytrain system becomes puny
in comparison. Those transportation
systems move millions of people ev-
ery day to hundreds of destinations
within their respective cities.
For instance the Paris Metro
train system has 16 lines (compare
that to our three Skytrain lines). The
Paris train lines crisscross each other
at more than 300 stations (compare
that with our Skytrain crisscrossing
one at Commercial-Boundary, one at
Lougheed Centre and one at Water-
front.)
Just been to Paris a few weeks
ago and I’m just so impressed by
the sheer efficiency of the trains - no
ding-dong announcement, just a plain
male guttural voice that points out the
name of the station once. No mincing
with words.
Going back again to our Skytrain,
that nicey-nicey ding-dong female an-
nouncement must already have been
ingrained in your brains, which goes
like “ding-dong, the next station is...
Commercial Broadway, transfer here
for the Millenium line, exit here for the
ninety-nine B line” or , “the next sta-
tion is... Main Street Science World,
exit here for long-distance rail and bus
services from Pacific Central Station”.
Such useless babble. Even if they don’t
tell me, I’d already know I have to get
off that station to transfer to where I’m
going to. Anybody in their right mind
would already have studied which sta-
tions he or she has to get off, way be-
fore even going on the train.
Imagine if the Paris Metro will an-
nounce all transfers at every of their
station just like our SkyTrain here?
It’s just amazing to see how Ca-
ASEAN ends
Dr. Joyce Ambray , dentist extraordinary. ( Ed
Santiago)
and
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WWW.PHILIPPINEASIANNEWSTODAY.COM
nadians really love to over-indulge in
gobbledygook and redundancy. I al-
ways pay my parking by phone and
the first thing I hear is “please enter
your secret PIN number.”
I’m the only one who knows my
PIN so, of course it’s secret! And by
the way, PIN already means Personal
Identification Number, so what the
voice instructions really is saying is
“please enter your secret Personal
Identification Number number.” Oh
please....